Endnotes 1-100

The data in this report was derived from a collection of online directories on the major national Tea Party faction websites: Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, 1776 Tea Party (also known as TeaParty.org), FreedomWorks Tea Party, and ResistNet Tea Party. The data for the sixth national Tea Party formation mentioned in this report, the Tea Party Express, was drawn from filings with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

The data provides a partial picture of the Tea Party activist base. It is important to note that there may be many more individuals who are not listed in these social networking directories – who either chose not to register, who have registered on some other site (such as one or more of the many local Tea Party sites), or who do not have sufficient computer skills.

Tea Party Membership Data

With the exception of the daily membership totals, the bulk of the Tea Party membership data used in this report was collected during the period from May 1 to May 5, 2010. Using software generously provided by Sequentum, an automated process allowed for the copying and compiling of the website membership data into a local SQL database.

Records retrieved from all five Tea Party faction sources generally included: name, city, state, country, and gender. Some records were incomplete – missing city, state, country, gender, etc. Incomplete records were included in the overall numbers, not in areas where data was missing. We also downloaded the contribution records from FEC.gov for Our Country Deserves Better PAC – TeaPartyExpress.com for the same period and imported those records.

From the initial captured material, we worked with the data to eliminate duplicates and extraneous data. We also normalized the data, making sure that column names were the same, and that state and abbreviations were consistent. We then imported that data into a main SQL database.

Once we had a completed Tea Party membership data set, we then geo-coded the set using the city and state information. That information was later used to map the location of membership location using Tableau Public.

After the importation process we ran specific queries to work specifically with Tea Party member data and to extract the information we needed. Those queries included: Tea Party Members by State, Tea Party Members by City, Tea Party Members by Faction, Tea Party Membership by City vs local Unemployment Rate, and Tea Party Membership Totals by City as a percentage of the City population.

Tea Party Chapter Data

The Tea Party chapter information in this report was also collected during the period from May 1 to May 5, 2010, using a process similar to how membership information was compiled. Due to poor site layout, one site required manual data entry of the group data.

The data was placed into a separate Tea Party Chapter database. We used the same process as we did with Tea Party membership data to clean and normalize the Tea Party chapter data. We also geo-coded the data to be able to map the chapter locations.

Additional Data Sources

In addition to the Tea Party data, we relied on several other data sources in this report. The city population data came from the 2008 US Census Data. The city unemployment rate data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics January 2010 Not Seasonally Adjusted Unemployment Rates for Metropolitan Areas Monthly Rankings.

[2]. A crossover of only 93 unique usernames exists between the Campaign for Liberty online membership (http://www.campaignforliberty.com/memberlist.php) compiled by IREHR in June 2010 and the membership database of the members of all the national Tea Party factions compiled by IREHR in May/June 2010.

[9]. For more on the relationship between racism and the mortgage crisis, see for instance: Applied Research Center, Race and Recession: How Inequity Rigged the Economy and how to Change the Rules, Applied Research Center, May 2009; Christy Rogers, "Subprime Loans, Foreclosure, and the Credit Crisis (What Happened and Why? - A Primer)," The Kirwan Institute, December, 2008; Seth Wessler, "Inequality Has Rigged Our Economy and It Is Time to Change the Rules: The economic crisis is built on the country's long history of racial discrimination," Common Dreams website, September 1, 2009, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/01-4; Amaad Rivera et al., State of the Dream 2008: Foreclosed (Boston: United for a Fair Economy, 2008).

[53]. Shawna Forde was an early Tea Partier. She attended the April 15, 2009 Tea Party rally in Phoenix. "This is the time for all Americans to join organizations and REVOLT!!!," Forde blogged from the Tea Party rally. "Refuse to be part of a system only designed to enslave you and you children. Times will get worse before they get worse, *Say no to illegal immigration* Lock and Load, Shawna Forde."; Stephen Lemons, "Shawna Forde, Alleged Kid Killer, Extremist, Phoenix Tea Party Attendee, and Ghost of Tea Parties Future," Phoenix New Times, June 22, 2009, http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2009/06/right_wing_extremist_shawna_fo.php

[57]. Eichler is the president of the for-profit company FaxDC, which 1776 Tea Party utilizes. The company shares the same mailing address as the 1776 Tea Party address in California. Visitors to the 1776 Tea Party website who clicked on the "Fax Congress" link could be taken to a page where they would be asked to pay $57.76 to send faxes to members of Congress using FaxDC. Until around August 2010, payments were going directly to FaxDC.

[79]. The names of the individuals listed were found by querying the username, city, and state of the ResistNet.com social network membership database compiled by IREHR in May/June 2010 against the IREHR-compiled database of State and Local Nativist organizations, leader names, city, and state. The names that emerged from that query were then confirmed by telephone.

About IREHR

The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR) is a national organization with an international outlook examining racist, anti-Semitic, white nationalist, and far-right social movements, analyzing their intersection with civil society and social policy, educating the public, and assisting in the protection and extension of human rights through organization and informed mobilization.